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Wednesday, 14 May 2014

TIME TRAVELLING Anne Cassidy

Start a story when something is happening. This is what I
have told creative writing students in the past. Picture a woman sitting in a
chair in a beautifully furnished room. The woman is unhappy you can tell
because she’s wringing her hands. So far so good.

Depending on the skill of the writer this scene could be
beautifully described. It could end up as a vibrant and evocative piece where
the decor could reflect or contrast with the obvious feeling of unease inside
the woman.

But it would not be a story until something happens.

The phone rings. The woman is startled. She goes across to
it and picks it up nervously. A voice on the other end says, “I have your
daughter. She is still alive and will stay that way as long as you don’t go to
the police.”

Now we have a story. In a few pages we have a crime, a
distraught mother, knowledge that no police are involved. We have a dilemma and
the promise of intrigue and drama to come.

But in order to explain how this state of affairs came about
we have to travel back in time. If you start with something dramatic you have
to explain to the reader – somehow – how this situation arose. Readers know
this. They expect a whole range of storytelling techniques when they open the
pages of a book and they know they’ll probably do some time travelling.

There are a number of ways of doing this. Flashbacks, of
course and then feeding the ‘backstory’ into the narrative via the thoughts and
memories of the characters. Dialogue is also a good way; one character telling
another about something that happened in the past. All these are techniques to
fill in the gaps so that the present day story can move on.

Another way is to set part of the novel in the past. The
novel I’m working on at the moment which is called MOTH GIRLS starts when a
house is being demolished. Five years before this house was the scene of the
disappearance of two twelve year old girls. The first part of the novel takes
place in the weeks after the house was demolished and is seen through the eyes
of a girl who was friends with those that have gone missing. Part two of the
novel takes place five years earlier and is told from another character’s point
of view. This means that the novel will jump forward again.

Teenage readers have no problem with this. These techniques
are used in movies and television drama to great effect. Keep my fingers
crossed that I can use them to great effect as well.

7 comments:

She should go to the police. Those kidnappers always say 'Don't go to the police,' because they would say that, wouldn't they? Idiots, they've just revealed the one thing they are afraid of.

Anyone who would kill a hostage because you go to the police would kill the hostage for any number of other reasons. So logic alone dictates that you *always call the police*. :-) Just saying.

(To get back to the point of the post: I wonder sometimes about the vogue for 'in media res'. I sometimes yearn for those old-fashioned kinds of stories with an extended stasis at the beginning before anything really dramatic happens. Never dared attempt that myself, mind.)